Michelle Williams

Anyone who knows me or has been reading anything I’m allowed to write here knows I’ve got no time for cutesy-poos. I am not a Portman fan, though that’s well-documented elsewhere. I have very little time for anyone that most people think is gorgeous and precious and delicate – Claire Danes can, at times, fall into this category, as can Dianna Agron. Gwyneth – you get the idea. Anyone who is cotton-candy-pink-sweetness-daddy-locket-romance makes me want to puke.

And yet I’ve always liked Michelle Williams a little bit, not least because she points out that diminutive and blonde need not mean cutesy and sugary. And she has interesting things to say in interviews, which Ryan Gosling reminds us. And she has all these people watching closely to see what she’s going to do, and talking about how her daughter looks every single day, and usually she shows them, gently, some delightful enchantment like the Vera Wang Oscar Dress that we all still talk about, and the people love her and the critics love her, and we’re all happier.

Which is why her dress tonight is like – borderline irresponsible. I don’t know why she thinks that she can wear these cartoon daisies –and they’re not cute, they’re not a trend, they’re not doing something cool, they’re not even an interpretable pattern – with SEASHELLS FOR STRAPS – and try to pull it off like “what? Guys, what? This is totally a dress.” Even Alexa Chung, whose delightful disregard for just what the night was about is well documented elsewhere on this blog, was like “Come on, for real? That thing?”

I’m all for having fun with clothing, but I can’t help thinking she promised someone she’d wear something and then just…did. Unlike Portman, this dress is not going to endear her to anyone. Oddly enough, I could have understood – not tolerated, but understood – a pinky confection from someone like her who’s trying to come back from an NC-17 rating and continue to play in the biggish leagues.

Some dresses are for the men, and some are for the ladies. And some, snobby as it sounds, are only for the fashion forward, and I self-importantly count myself among them in taste, if not always in execution. But I don’t think men, or women, or the Mushroom Preservation Society, who dyed that dress that colour, were happy with how that all turned out. Were they?

SEASHELLS. ON HER STRAPS.

Go see Blue Valentine, though.

PS – when I said on the liveblog that she looks like herself in Dick, I was pleased with myself. For yes, that movie is my one and only foray into teenaged extra-dom. And I made the cut!